wisdom

Pearls Before Tone-Deaf Swine

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“Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” – Robert Heinlein.

Screw it – if I can’t teach the pig to sing, I’ll preach to the choir about these non-singing pigs we seem to have populating our country lately.

There’s a sickening anti-intellectualism in our country. Isaac Asimov said, “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” Continue reading →

It’s not your fault, but it is your problem.

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“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.”

– Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr, 1934

These words have woven themselves into popular culture, thanks in large part to their inclusion in the liturgy of Alcoholics Anonymous. The prayer wasn’t written for AA, but it fits so perfectly that it could have been.

A person dealing with addiction lives on the boundary between that which is innate and that which is personal choice. No one chooses to have the impulse, but there are thousands of choices any of us can make that stack the deck to influence whether that impulse is likely to win or lose. Continue reading →

I am thankful for pain.

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Let me preface this post with a caveat: I’m writing about positivity, loss, pain, redemption, lessons, and the like. It’s important that I tell you that I’ve lived a charmed life. I’ve never gone hungry. I’ve never lost my home or my parents or siblings to war or terrorism. No one I know has ever gotten ebola or river blindness. I have multiple changes of clean, dry clothes, a car that runs, a girlfriend that loves me, and a dog that thinks I am a giant biped dog with whom he gets to live. Continue reading →

A little country wisdom for y’all

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Two flies were sitting in a corral on a pile of cow manure. They were going to town, eating their fill, just enjoying life. They saw a pitchfork leaning up against the fence. The two flies decided rather than flying up there, they could just leisurely walk right up the handle to the top to bask in the sun for a while.

When they got to the top, they were just about to stretch out and relax, when they saw the farmer walking straight toward them. Continue reading →